De Plantatione

Philo Judaeus

The works of Philo Judaeus, the contemporary of Josephus, volume 1. Yonge, C. D., translator. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854.

We have now detailed one of the opinions concerning a wise man getting drunk: and the second is as follows:—

v.1.p.448

The men of the present day, with the exception of a small portion of them, do not choose in any way to resemble the men of old times; but both in mind and action they show that they are in no respect agreed with them, but that they differ from them widely.

For they have made such a revolution as to bring reasons which were sound and healthy into incurable decay and destruction. And in the place of a vigorous and athletic habit, they have brought almost every thing into a state of disease; and in the place of a full, and strong, and sinewy body, they have rendered it weak, inducing an unnatural, and swollen, and sickly habit, filling it up with empty wind alone, which soon bursts by reason of the want of any power to keep it together, when it is extended in the greatest degree.